How to Learn a Language

The building blocks of every language is vocabulary. If you can learn to say “I want a puppy” in your target language, then you can easily replace “puppy” with different words to convey what you want.

Vocab, Vocab, Vocab

Benjamin Rich, otherwise known as Bald and Bankrupt, is an author and vlogger who travels the world and showcases his interactions with locals on unbeaten paths.

Rich is not associated with Vocab Viper in any way, but you should definitely check out his channel and watch his great adventures.

In this excellent video, Rich outlines why learning vocabulary is more important than learning grammar:

What Vocab?

At the start of a language learning journey, there are multiple paths to take when it comes to learning vocabulary. With so much to learn, most people want to focus on common words inside the most important categories. For example, you are more likely to need to know the word “cow” than you are “eel.”

Vocab Viper's Core has the following 16 categories:

The pictures and structures for these categories are identical across all the languages Vocab Viper offers. So if you want to learn to say "cow" in multiple ways, you can.

How to study vocab

When learning vocab, a common mistake people make is trying to "logic" the learning process. For example:

"If I learn 50 words a day, then 365 days x 50 means I'll know 18,250 words in just one year!!!"

Although it may be possible for you to review 50 new words in a day, this strategy will eventually leave you drained and unmotivated. A more realistic goal is to absorb and retain words slowly.

If you had started your language learning journey just 1 year ago with the goal of only learning 2 words a day, you would already know over 700 words by now.

The Core of Vocab Viper splits 560 vocab into groups of 8-20 words depending on the topic. Each word is introduced along with audio and a picture so that you can associate the 3 together. 

You can easily review and drill vocab with the flash cards that Vocab Viper provides, but the best way of testing your knowledge and drilling the words is through the "Picture to Words" and "Words to Pictures" quizzes. 

Here's an example of Picture To Words:

Bonus: 85%, a Bridge

The top 1,000 most frequently spoken words account for 85% of speech. (Nation, 1990)

Knowing the top 1,000 words results in knowing 75% of a written text. (Nation, 1993)

Learning the top 1,000 words is like building yourself a bridge to cross over to your new language. Once you can cross it you can engage with your new language more easily.

As a bonus, Vocab Viper offers a Top 1,000 Course for each of the languages we have available. You're given 10 words at a time, and you can progress at your own speed. Vocab Viper saves your progress so that you can always start where you left off.

You'll know the most important words of your target language within 3 months if you just learn 10 words a day.

This was Part 1 of How to Learn a Language. Click below to advance.